'Victory or Death' letter returns to the Alamo

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — William Barret Travis' letter vowing "Victory or Death" and pleading for help for his besieged forces at the Alamo will return for the first time to where it was penned for a two-week public viewing.

Travis' Feb. 24, 1836, letter addressed to "the People of Texas and All Americans in the World" will get a police escort to the Alamo on Friday from the state archive in Austin, where it is kept.

A courier on horseback smuggled the single-page letter from the old Spanish mission where Travis and his men had taken up defense against Mexican army forces sent to put down their rebellion. It was widely published in newspapers and pamphlets, but too late to help the roughly 180 men defending the Alamo, who were all killed.